It's now been one full month since the catastrophic events in the USA. You would think that we as a principled broadsheet would not be so desperate for readers that we would already be treating it as a nostalgia feast, as we did on Thursday, but for those of you who missed our special souvenir edition with its collectors' 32-page glossy pullout supplement featuring detailed debris and groovy gore, here's a summary of the comments which we assembled from our pool of celebrity commentators. To spice up the grief even more, we've not ascribed these comments to their authors, though most will be very easy to spot. See how many you can identify. Correctly!!!!
The unascribed grief. The adumbrated window ledge. Difference of motives albeit no vision of difference. Yellowing formerly orange Sainsbury carrier bags. 1980 vintage port ossifying in the pantry. My rhinoplasty still making me sneeze. Telephones and faxes to NW3; none to SE27. Indifference in Prague. Formulated insurance policies; unformed Parisienne Chophouse matchbooks. Life on a leash; lusher than louche.
The world changed forever on 9 November; sorry I always forget the Yanks write dates the other way around. They have to be different and now they're paying the price for thus wishing. It's far too early to say whether the world has indeed changed forever; our perception can only lead to subjective fallacies since our viewpoint is not that from the dusky Mecca of our sub-Haringey aesthetichoodfulshire. But the world certainly changed. It is not an underestimation to say that it is forever.
The explosion has become the reality. Movie wishes become mortal facts. America has had its glitztudinessham exploded right in its face. A fuller treatise upon the cultural irrelativism of this historic gulf, a grander canyon than any likely to formulate in Shepperton, can be found in my imminent new novel, Cross My Glenfiddich Heroin Hays (Hodder & Staughton, £29.99 for the first week of issue, £2.99 thereafter) which defines definition definitively.
The whole thing has changed, the script's been rewritten. Not as well as darling Orson would have written it for sure - "be Kim Menaker for me, Gore," he begged me in 1985, "ascend the acropolis of my beatitude." Darling Demosthenian bulk which he was. He composed my post-Nixonilianoid breath, animated my potential civilisations. He always used cash, you know. Always on the move. Like those planes. Except when they crashed into the towers. Then all of a sudden they weren't. Hardrada at Stamford Bridge.
This is just so TYPICAL of what INADEQUATE MEN will DO. Would a WOMAN have done this? In this still penis-driven cattle market which passes for civilisation - what do you mean, Thatcher would've nuked the whole bloody lot by now? You POOR DARLING, you MISS the POST-SPICE PENISTHESIA that WAS, verily IS, my integral WETNESS, to which I am a WITNESS.
They will destroy them and then he will destroy us. Dropping food on Afghans will kill them; dropping bombs on Afghans will kill them. The trick is not to drop. This war is no excuse for and is not excused by imperialism. I too thought Ash would've done better than Number 20.
Eh? Eh? The World Trade Centre? What was that all about, eh? Eh? The Two Towers? Wasn't that a Tolkein book? Doesn't that mean that they were built by HIPPIE SADDOES GET A LIFE DRINK SODA STREAM LISTEN TO SLIK MIDGE YAY! They were just trainspotters! I'll tell you what, though - it was just like a film, wasn't it? I mean it could've been a movie. Like Informing Tower and that? I wouldn't know I was watching Rising Damp at the time MISS JONES YAY! That Bin Liner, eh? Don't he look like Cat Stevens? Or Gallagher after he's just come out of the shower, having previously been defenestrated by Patsy "Beans" Kensit? That "Moulin Rouge" eh? What was that all about? Didn't Ewan McGregor sound just like Midge Ure? It were like an extended Ultravox video. OH VIENNA KEPT OFF THE TOP BY JOE DOLCE YAH BOO SADDOES!! And David Cassidy's back in the charts so really it's just 1973 again, 'cos like the Twin Towers never not got built 'til then did they? So they weren't there then, just like they're not there now, yeah? YAY DONNY!
Osama Bin Laden. I never promised you a rose garden. 'Cos I'm goin' down, down, deeper and down. I'm gonna leave old Durham town. You can't hide your lying blue Spanish eyes. Who ate all the pies?
Oh spinchter sex. You're gonna die on your knife led. Daffodils curmudgeon. All everything in the precise order but now reversed Canada bored.
Is that Whale Dickin Boyd Hansen? I wish to raise sundry key points that have hitherto been unfairly omitted from the debate. I was disgusted this evening. We are at war, yes? You acknowledge that we are at war? I came home tonight, out of my cab/truck/cockpit (delete as appropriate), and what do you think my missus and kids were doing? Only eating their tea! I mean it's disgusting, isn't it, people eating at a time of grave crisis, when they should be engaging with key issues in the great debate and keeping abreast of current developments. I shall certainly cease to eat for the duration of this war and continue instead to monitor proceedings on CNN. What people tend to forget is that if more people were like this, we wouldn't not have no wars would we? I blame them Bulger asylum seeker killers for this war myself, you know. Do you like Gerry and the Pacemakers? We went to see them in Thame last Thursday. Real music, not like the crap you get nowadays like the Sweet.
More of this in the Guardian each and every fucking day for as long as they can get away with it. Keep those Cruise missiles rolling in, "boys"!
― Went and saw my GP this morning; he reckons my condition is pretty typical and I, Saturday, 13 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
RUBBISHA CLAIMS "EXTREMISTS WEEDED OUT"
By Our Guardian Staff Polly Putmtvasiaon
Guardian Editor, Al-Rubbisha, has denied claims that his newspaper
holds a fringe group of anti-American extremists who sang "America
The Bastards" in celebration on the afternoon of September 11.
Rubbisha insisted in an interview with Boris 'Beano' Johnson of the
Spectularlyboring that "of course we have about 30 columnists who
thought it was a wholly acceptable retaliation for the fact that
every house in Islington other than theirs has MTV and the Cartoon
Network, but apart from that ..." (cont. page 94).
― Ian Hisplop (shurely shome mishtake? Ed.), Sunday, 14 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
TORY FACTION SAYS "BOMB THE LOT"
By Our Conservative Staff William Enoch-Hastings
An extremist faction at the Conservative Party Conference in
Blackpool has called for the bombing of all British inner-city areas
that contain a large Muslim population, so as to "weed out" any
possible terrorist attacks from within Britain.
Said Christopher Gill, "of course some would say that this is why we
can't even hold Ludlow anymore, but I ask how many Muslims live in
Shropshire? Exactly! All my former constituents will be right
behind this idea!"
Tony Blair is 48 (points ahead of Duncan Smith in the polls).
― Pissed Public Schoolboy, Soho, Sunday, 14 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Actually, Marcello, my favourite record of 1973 was the third Roxy
Music album, which was a veritable masterpiece of ... erm ... Aladdin
Sane was a conceptual work of genius ... shit, I've forgotten how to
talk in reasonably sophisticated terms about the 70s ... NO! GOT
IT! I LUV YOU LUV ME LUV! BILLY BREMNER'S RED HAIR! WHAT TIMES WE
HAD!
Shit. Got a phone call from the Daily Mail to give a quote for their
new series of articles about the last golden age of innocent
childhood around 1975. I can remember when they demonised everything
about that era and praised the 1950s as some kind of "last golden
age". Ah well, I suppose I'd better play along. I don't think I
have much choice these days.
(hangs up)
― The Road to Wigan Pier, Sunday, 14 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)